Spawning season is winding down here in South Florida but it's just getting started in most of the country. All season long it seems like my buddies and I have been discussing the effects of catching spawning bass off beds. I have always thought that it can hurt the population, but it's not as bad if people are releasing the fish. Of course with tournaments, we release them, but often a great distance from where they are caught. Some fisherman prefer to leave bedding fish alone. Well a new study by the University of Florida shows that catching spawning bass won't deplete populations.
They "found that in most cases, spawning area closures won’t improve bass
populations, for a couple of reasons,” he said. “One is, there’s a lot
of catch and release nowadays. The other is, if you lose some nests,
the ones that are left have higher survival rates.”
You can read the entire article by clicking below:
1 comment:
From my understanding this study is just a confirmation of several others. Bed fishing simply does not affect largemouth populations, smallmouth are a different story. I think it is kind of a no brainer that overharvest of fish, whether it be during the spawn or not will have a detrimental effect on a fishery; Isn't "overharvest" detrimental by definition?
On another note- The thing about overharvest is that you reap what you sow. With overharvest usually fishing gets more difficult, the meat hogs move on to greener pastures and the fishery gets a chance to recover so a good fishery is only temporarily harmed.
Post a Comment